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Found 42 article(s) for author 'George Serafeim'

Yes, Sustainability Can Be a Strategy. George Serafeim, February 11, 2019, Opinion, “In recent years, a growing number of companies around the world have voluntarily adopted and implemented a broad range of sustainability practices. The accelerating rate of adoption of these practices has also provoked a debate about the nature of sustainability and its long-term implications for organizations. Is the adoption of sustainability practices a form of strategic differentiation that can lead to superior financial performance? Or, is it a strategic necessity that can ensure corporate survival but not necessarily outperformance?” Link

Financing the Response to Climate Change: The Pricing and Ownership of U.S. Green Bonds. Malcolm Baker, George Serafeim, April 27, 2018, Paper, “Estimates suggest that mitigating and adapting to climate change will cost trillions of dollars. We study the developing market for green bonds, which are bonds whose proceeds are used for environmentally sensitive purposes. After an overview of the U.S. corporate and municipal green bonds market, we study pricing and ownership patterns of municipal green bonds using a framework that incorporates assets with nonpecuniarysources of utility. The results support the prediction that green bonds are issued at a premium to otherwise similar ordinary bonds—that is, with lower yields—on an after-tax basis.” Link

Sustainability: a new way of doing business. George Serafeim, March 22, 2018, Audio, “George Serafeim is the Jakurski Family Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He has a wide range of research interests including international business, corporate governance and corporate reporting, with a special focus on sustainability. George has presented his research in over 60 countries and is one of the most popular business authors, according to rankings of the Social Science Research Network.” Link

George Serafeim on employment, inequality, and the relationship between corporate purpose and financial performance March 2018. GrowthPolicy’s Devjani Roy interviewed George Serafeim, Jakurski Family Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, on employment, inequality, and the relationship between corporate purpose and financial performance. | Click here for more interviews like this one. Links: […]

Does Sustainable Investing Lead to Lower Returns? George Serafeim, January 25, 2018, Paper, “Taking into account the work that the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board has done in identifying material ESG issues, industry by industry, in another study we analyzed more than 2,000 stocks over 22 years and showed that firms improving their performance on material ESG issues, such as on environmental impact in the power sector, workplace safety in the mining sector, and employee inclusiveness in the information-technology sector, have significantly higher future risk-adjusted returns. A negative screening in the oil-and-gas sector would exclude all companies, while an ESG integration approach would take into account how different firms are investing in renewable-energy generation and electric charging stations, dimensions on which Shell and Exxon Mobil, for instance, look very different. […]we documented that development of ESG funds is driven by marketing goals as opposed to investment logic.” Link

Inclusive Growth: Profitable Strategies for Tackling Poverty and Inequality. Robert Kaplan, George Serafeim, January 2018, Paper, “More than a billion people in the developing world remain in extreme poverty and outside the formal economy. Traditional CSR programs have done little to alleviate the situation and rarely produce transformative change. Instead of trying to fix local problems, the authors argue, corporations need to reimagine the regional ecosystems in which they participate. They should search for systemic, multisector opportunities; mobilize complementary partners; and obtain seed and scale-up financing from organizations with a mission to alleviate poverty.” Link

Can Index Funds Be a Force for Sustainable Capitalism? George Serafeim, December 7, 2017, Opinion, “The investment industry is changing. Among other things, there is growing demand from both retail and institutional investors to align their capital with better environmental and social outcomes, and more resources going into index fund or quasi-indexing products. These two trends may seem separate—or, some people believe, incompatible—but together I believe they have the power to improve finance’s role in the world. Index funds can be a force for sustainable capitalism.” Link

Does Financial Misconduct Affect the Future Compensation of Alumni Managers? Boris Groysberg, George Serafeim, November 15, 2017, Paper, “We explore how an organization’s financial misconduct may affect pay for former employees not implicated in wrongdoing. Drawing on stigma theory we hypothesize that although such alumni did not participate in the financial misconduct and they had left the organization years before the misconduct, they experience a compensation penalty. Our results support this prediction. The stigma effect increases in relation to the job function proximity to the misconduct, recency of the misconduct, and an employee’s seniority. Collectively, our results suggest that the stigma of financial misconduct could reach alumni employees and need not be confined to executives and directors that oversaw the organization during the misconduct.” Link

Summa Equity: Building Purpose-Driven Organizations. George Serafeim, November 2017, Case, “In 2015, Reynir Indahl left top Nordic private equity firm Altor Equity Partners to found Summa Equity (Summa). After long contemplation following the financial crisis, Indahl was convinced the financial system was producing negative externalities and that the current private equity model adopted by most firms would no longer be successful. Summa was developed under a new private equity model that sought to “future-proof” businesses by focusing on long term value creation and growth, in addition to traditional private equity practices of implementing best practices and productivity improvements.” Link

Investors as Stewards of the Commons? George Serafeim, August 8, 2017, Paper, “Over the past few years, there has been a significant increase in the number of initiatives seeking to mobilize investor voice towards positive social impact. In this paper, I provide a framework outlining the role of investors as stewards of the commons. While companies are increasingly addressing environmental and social issues that also improve their economic value, for some of these issues individual company action is costly. At the same time, for a further subset of those issues, company action coupled with collaboration between companies is value enhancing. However, collaboration between companies is notoriously difficult and fragile requiring commitment mechanisms.” Link

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